


Leather Badass and the Doc

by acceptnosubstitutes



Category: Falling Skies
Genre: Badass Family (Maggie and Anthony and Dai), F/F, Femslash February, canon type violence, minor strong language, otherwise thee of no last names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acceptnosubstitutes/pseuds/acceptnosubstitutes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine someone you love is about to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leather Badass and the Doc

Tabbed in (-) indicates the following is a scene within a scene.

-

It’s a Friday, as far as the calendar will tell Anne. She’s got the battered thing – scratches, tears, burned along the edges where someone tried to use it for kindling and she’d  _punched_ the man for his troubles – set up in her office. Office is a generous word for the cramped broom closet she has in the corner of the makeshift infirmary tent. Tiny desk shoved up in a corner, worn wooden chair with no cushion, her only light sunlight, and it’s more like a posh prison cell. But Anne goes through her patients’ charts there and she keeps the calendar in a drawer under a heavy stack of papers.

Every day she marks off another 24 hour period that 2nd Mass has managed to live through the night. She’s getting to the end of the calendar. After that it’s not like Anne can go the local store and pick up another. The calendar she imagines in her mind, though, is filled with famous works of art and blurbs about Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Cole. It’s a flight of fancy.

Anne throws herself into her work after Tom. Leaves. Things are messy. The battle at Fitchburg alone cost them many lives. She’s dealt with a few amputations in the past weeks. And Anne might be lost without Lourdes.

It’s a Friday, and Anne tosses Lourdes a grateful smile as she etches out a circle around the young woman, pills in one hand and a glass of water in the other. They’re for the elder gentleman coughing on a cot near the back. He’s got a rattling wheeze.

Anne’s just given the man his meds, holding the glass of water steady so his shaky hands don’t spill it, when someone clears their throat. Uncle Scott stands in the door way of the tent, loop of wire around his neck and hands shoved in pants pockets stained black. He has something of exasperation written across his face.

Anne doesn’t care to see it, doesn’t care to hear another lecture about how she works too hard. Doesn’t need to eat another meal to see if she’ll feel better after. Someone to talk to, a stranger, even family, won’t get this weight off her chest.

It’s been about a month, since Tom left. It is a Friday.

Anne smiles at the old man, and turns to her next patient. She doesn’t face the tent entrance again until Scott sighs and footsteps recede away.

Anne Glass is one hundred percent a-okay.

-

Morning blends into early afternoon as Anne and Lourdes work among the sick and groaning. Lourdes leaves the tent now and again on some errand, bringing back blankets for two young kids shivering, a favorite book for an elderly woman stuck in the infirmary tent overnight. Once she brings a young man back with her. They both smile, shyly, at each other and Lourdes introduces him as Jamil Dexter.

For the most part Anne doesn’t leave the infirmary tent. So many patients, so little time, her motto. But eventually someone else clears their throat at the tent entrance and Anne forgets she doesn’t want to be interrupted. She looks up.

Margaret watches Anne back, eyebrow cocked, holding two plates of what looks like rice and chicken instead of barely passing for edible food. John Pope must be back in the kitchens.

“Canned chicken,” Margaret says, but the way she looks at the plates makes it seem like words of worship. “Never saw you two come to the lunch line for grub.”

Margaret sets her load down on an available crate nearby. She nods in return when Lourdes nods her thanks.

“I had a lot of patients,” Anne says. She wipes her brow, surprised at the sweat that comes away when she wipes the back of her hand on her shirt. Has she really been working that long?

“Sure, sure,” and Margaret’s already backing out of the tent, “I’ll get out of your hair. Just, eat when you can, yeah?”

Eat when you can. Anne snorts, shaking her head when Lourdes looks questioningly at her. If that isn’t a motto for 2nd Mass, eat when you can, on the run, during battle, Anne doesn’t know what is.

Anne gets back to work. With only two doctors, and neither fully professionally trained for the challenges they daily face, they have to work hard to take care of 2nd Mass. Both Lourdes and Anne’s practical field experience of the last little over half-year helps, but Lourdes isn’t the only one who looks over their endless stream of patients, wondering what more she could do for them with only the right equipment, the right drugs, the right training.

It’s only a half an hour later that Anne realizes she never thanked Margaret for bringing them lunch.

-

Anne’s worn a fair deep impression in the soft dirt under her feet, pacing back and forth, arguing with herself to go back to the infirmary, this is foolish. Anthony tips his head back, laughs at something Dai must have said to him, and catches her eyes. Too late. Well, it would be rude to ignore him, wouldn’t it?

“So what can we do for doc today?” Anthony asks, easy grin, relaxed slouch.

Dai nods to her. “Anne.”

Anne bites her lip. It’s just that she’s seen how easily Margaret takes to the two men before her. Just that Anne can’t help but notice the playful grins Anthony draws out of her, the quiet peace she shares with Dai, the fact Margaret is notably to be found with the two of them when not on a job, when not with Hal.

So it makes sense they would know where Margaret is when she isn’t in any of those places including her designated bunk.

“Have you guys seen Margaret?” Anne gets it out before she can think better of it. It’s foolish, and she’s spent far too long tracking down one woman just to say thanks.

Anthony shrugs, looks to Dai.

“Maggie took off to the woods with her pistols and orders to not be disturbed,” he nods in a northward direction.

“Oh,” Anne says, backing away, thoughts already on how many patients she needs to see and images of an overwhelmed Lourdes.

She stops when Anthony laughs again.

“Pope,” Anthony says, still chuckling off and on, “she always just means Pope. Don’t sneak up on her though. She doesn’t like that.”

Anne picks her way through woods, sure she’s picked the wrong direction, when she hears gunshots. They sound in precise three second intervals with the clink of what might be aluminum. She’s not supposed to sneak up on Margaret, and really tries not to, coming at the clearing where the blond is at an angle. And Anne stops.

Six empty beer cans sit atop a fallen log settled on thick pieces of wood three high, at level with Margaret’s chest. Margaret stands, feet apart, just tilted toward the makeshift range with the wind blowing her unbound hair back and stirring her leather jacket. She bites the edge of her lip, bit of tongue poking out as her arm raises, fires, and then lowers. Another aluminum can falls off the log before Anne recovers.

When the last can has fallen off the log, Anne brings her hands together and claps. Sure enough, it gets Margaret’s attention. A slow, but easy grin spreads across her face when she sees Anne.

“Never told you thanks for lunch Margaret. Thanks.”

Margaret tosses her head back and laughs, sliding her gun back into its holster. “You came all the way out here for that?”

Anne shrugs, picking at the edge of a pocket. “It would have been rude not to.”

Her job done, Anne nods, turns to leave Margaret to her practice.

“Maggie.”

Margaret’s setting up another row of cans, stacking them on top of each other to form a pyramid. Her back is to Anne.

“What?”

Still turned, Margaret shrugs. “Call me Maggie.”

-

It’s like 2nd Mass lives to get into trouble. One minor skirmish after the other and soldiers are bringing in wounded only to go out and get wounded themselves. Anne and Lourdes don’t sleep as much as they should, for days.

“This one,” says Lourdes, handing Anne a piece of paper, “said he had a headache but I didn’t find any major injuries on him other than some scrapes and bruises. I gave him some Tylenol and sent him home.”

Anne signs off on the chart, really just a list of the patient’s name, symptoms, and treatment given, with a pen she procured from a gas station last week. It was a lovely purple thing and only the handle part chipped off.

“That’s one down,” Anne says.

“Nine to go,” Lourdes finishes with a smile. She takes the chart to put with the rest of them in one of Anne’s desk drawers, and then is off to talk to a soldier with a gash across her arm.

That’s ten patients, one dealt with, in this tent alone and the tent is bulging. It can’t hold another person. There are more wounded outside, by the noise of the groans. Anne sighs, but ties her hair back and squats down next to a small girl sitting on a crate.

She tries for a warm smile, but it probably comes out tired instead. “Now you can’t be in from the battle. What’s wrong?”

Sniffling, the girl sticks out a leg and shows Anne a little scrape across her knee.

“Ah,” says Anne, “I have just the thing.”

There are a few different boxes of band-aides left in her desk’s top drawer and Anne brings them all back, along with a mostly gone tube of Neosporin.

“Flowers or transformers?”

Anne smiles when the girl picks the latter.

“Guess the mechs didn’t frighten all the kids off giant, fearsome robots,” Maggie says with a wry grin from the open tent flap. She steps aside to let the girl run out past her, coming inside after.

“Oh no,” Anne says, “You’re not injured too are you?”

Maggie’s forced to raise her hands and let Anne do a complete look over before she can get a word out. When Anne sighs in relief, Maggie chuckles.

“I’m fine doc. Was wondering if you might need some help around here though.” Maggie takes a look around Anne’s shoulder, raising an eyebrow at the state of the infirmary tent. “Where do you want me?”

Anne brightens considerably. “How many people did you see outside coming in?”

“A good sized crowd. Way too big for this little tent.”

“Exactly,” Anne says, nodding, “appropriate a tent nearby and get them set up in there, would you? Take a catalogue of their names, injuries, any important medical history or religious affiliations. Lourdes has a pen and paper.”

“Gotcha.”

An hour later and Maggie hands her a sheet of paper, written front to back in a neat, even scrawl. She leaves (after Anne calls out thanks to her back, an answering chuckle) and as Lourdes and Anne are winding down for the night, Anne remembers. Doesn’t Maggie hate hospitals?

-

“So Maggie’s been around a lot.”

It’s one of their slower days, where Lourdes and Anne can relax a bit. Jamil came by earlier with two chipped cups full of lemonade, water and flavoring packets but lemonade all the same, and left chattering on in some technobabble that neither Lourdes nor Anne understood. But the lemonade stays chill and welcome refreshment from stale water.

“Yeah,” says Anne, swirling her straw around in her drink. She sits at her desk reading over as many charts as the fading light will allow.

Lourdes smiles at her back, like she knows something Anne doesn’t. “Wonder why that is?”

“She’s just been very helpful. I’m grateful for the assistance.” Anne turns around and smiles at Lourdes. Yours, as well, goes unsaid but heard all the same.

Lourdes nods. “You should tell her that.”

“Yeah,” Anne says, turning around. She makes it through a few more charts, tapping her pen against her desk, before the motion stills. “You know, I really should.”

Lourdes coughs into one hand, smothering what sounds like giggling.

-

Lourdes has a plan. She just needs to find the people who can put it into action. So when Hal comes back from a scouting mission, she makes sure to be there with a cold drink ready to welcome him home.

“Thanks,” Hal says, easy grin, when he takes the paper cup and drains it.

“You’re welcome.” And then a pause, to let Hal return his bike to the shed, before, “Do you know where Dai is?”

The easiest way to put her plan into motion is to locate Dai. And Hal always knows where his family is. A coping mechanism, maybe, from losing any number of them so often.

“Dai? Ah, when I left he and Anthony were keeping watch over Pope in the kitchen. ‘Bout a half-hour ago, he might still be there. Come on, we’ll go see.”

Hal tosses his sweaty gloves off at his bunk, Lourdes waiting patiently outside, and when he reappears it’s with a fresh shirt pulled on but the same dirty old jeans. Jeans are a lot harder to wash these days than shirts.

“Why do you need to see Dai anyway?” Hal strikes up conversation as they stroll along, systematically cracking his heck, shoulders, arms, and fingers with a sigh of satisfaction.

Lourdes clears her throat. Again with the giggle fit. But she almost can’t help it.

“Oh,” she says, smiling, “it’s a secret.”

Hal shrugs. “Who better to keep a secret than Dai?”

“Exactly.”

Hal drops her off at the kitchen with a wave to Dai and Anthony before he’s off to find the rest of his family. Pope swirls a wooden spoon around in a big metal pot nearby. He chatters away at Dai who does not appear to be listening. Whatever Pope’s cooking, it smells delicious.

“Canned tomatoes, okay, so of course I told him ‘you’re killing me here mate’ but like the asshole cared?”

It doesn’t take much to draw Dai and Anthony from Pope’s side. If anything, Anthony looks relieved.

“I don’t know you can stand all that noise without wanting to kill him,” he tells Dai, shaking his head.

“Hal.”

And then Anthony nods. “Suddenly I get it. Lourdes?”

Now to set up the pieces and watch them fall like dominos.

“You guys are like family to Maggie right?” The moment the word ‘family’ leaves her mouth Lourdes winces.

Dai looks away almost immediately and Anthony scuffs the ground with a boot, shrugging. Lourdes sighs.  _Men_.

“This,” she says, outlining her plan and daring either of them to protest, “is what we’re going to do.”

                -

“So John, I know you gotta have some good wine stashed away somewhere.”

Pope snorts, stirring his spoon three times clockwise, three times counterclockwise. Rinse and repeat. Like clockwork.

“I don’t drink that shit.”

Anthony chuckles, then gets in real close, close enough to bump shoulders and jostle Pope’s stirring. He receives a scowl.

“Uh-huh yeah,” Anthony says, grinning.

Pope eyes him with distrust. “What are you grinning about?”

“You so owe me for the incident at the river.”

There’s a clatter of wood against metal. Pope swears, retrieves the wooden spoon, and sticks it in Anthony’s face.

“Taste this,” Pope says, glaring, “and watch the pot while I’m gone.”

He’s back a few minutes later with a bottle in one hand, which gets shoved into Anthony’s chest.

“Now shut the fuck up. We agreed not to speak about  _that_ ever, ever again.”

“Needs more salt,” Anthony tells him. He leaves laughing.

                -

It’s strange, when Anne stops to think about it, but for all that Dai is one of the most injury prone men to ever cross her path, he’s generally not in the infirmary a terrible amount. Therefore, when he does stop by, Anne takes notice. Like Maggie, she gives him a complete look over before he can so much as speak.

“You don’t look injured,” she says, “but come in anyway, sit down a bit.”

“Doctor’s orders?”

Anne raises an eyebrow at him. “Like you have anything better to do?”

But then, maybe he does, so Anne waves him in and goes to close the tent flaps as best she can which isn’t very much. There are no patients in the infirmary at the moment and Anne can only spend so much time lining up the cots with the edges of the tent before it’s impossible to clean any further. So it’s good to have company, even quiet company.

“We don’t get to talk much,” Anne says, bringing her desk chair over and resting her arms on the backrest when she sits down. “How are you doing? With everything? With…with Tom being gone?”

Dai looks up at her and it’s probably the first time Anne can read him like an open book. “About as well as you are.”

And that’s not well at all.

Anne deflates, all the tension she didn’t know she was carrying rushing out of her like a balloon. She rests her chin on her hands and blinks rapidly for a moment.

“There’s a bottle of whiskey with our names on it,” she says, when she’s capable, “if you know of a better place than here.”

Anne looks around the infirmary. At the tent entrance. At her desk, where the calendar resides in one drawer, and her patients’ charts in another. At the lined up cots and over swept floor.

“I just, I can’t stay here a moment longer.”

Dai nods. Like he gets it. He probably does. He’s probably the only one who can.

                -

“So you like Anne.”

It’s an odd question to spring on a woman while she’s cleaning her gun, and Maggie’s cocked eyebrow tells Lourdes so.

“Sure,” says Maggie.

She goes back to cleaning but Lourdes only needs one little crack.

“No,” Lourdes says, shakes her head, “You like her.  _Like_  like.”

Maggie cleans the same spot for more than five seconds before she sets the rag down, lets her chair thump to the ground. In one of the dorm tents there’s even less privacy than the infirmary and people are starting to stare.

It takes Maggie all of a few moments to snap her gun back together and after that she’s showing Lourdes to the tent flap. Outside, she bites her lip.

“Maybe a little.”

One little crack.

Lourdes smiles a smile far too knowing for Maggie’s taste.

“You know the red tent with the gold sun painted on one side? Be there in an hour or so.”

“Hey,” Maggie shouts after Lourdes’ hastily retreating back, “for what?!”

-

Dai said a red tent with a gold sun painted on the side, didn’t he? But there’s no one in the tent when Anne ducks her head inside. A small table set with a mostly whole red tablecloth, a lit candle, bottle with the label turned away from Anne’s eyes set next to two chipped glasses, and two chairs is all that meets her eyes.

“Okay,” Anne says, backing up. Obviously she misheard. Even if she’s fairly sure she didn’t.

“Hey.”

Backing up brings Anne into near collision with Maggie, and both share a smile when they realize how close they are. Then Anne moves to the side. Maggie’s eyes scan the contents of the tent and she snorts and shakes her head.

“Have you seen Dai?” Anne asks. She doesn’t want to keep him waiting, after all, and this rising panic could deal with a hard edge of whiskey.

To her surprise, Maggie just laughs. “Was about to ask you which one it was but I guess that answers it.”

Which one? Anne turns back to the scene, picks up the bottle to read the label. That’s some expensive wine, even to her novice eye.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Maggie says, still chuckling.

Anne sets the bottle back down, patting the top absently.

“Then all this?”

A nod. Anne flushes.

“Really?”

Maggie finds the dirt floor suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.

“I mean, you can go if you want but. They did go to all of this trouble.”

“That  _is_ a pretty pricey red,” Anne muses out loud. “Where in the world did they find something like that?”

“So hey,” Maggie says, grinning, “they’re paying?”

Anne meets her eyes with the edges of her mouth already curling up, a delighted burst of laughter. Decision made. She doesn’t want to go back to the infirmary and it would indeed be a pity to waste that wine.

“Girl talk?”

And Maggie matches her grin for grin.

“Girl talk.”

                -

People give the red tent with the gold sun painted on one side odd stares throughout the night. Whether that’s from the raucous laughter within, or the three people standing guard outside, is anyone’s guess.

No one approaches either though, kept away by judiciously applied “keep moving” looks of warning.

Lourdes can’t help the bright smile spreading across her face, lulled easily into the good mood emanating from inside the tent. She drags a chuckle from Anthony when she bumps her hip against his. He in turn loops an arm around Dai’s neck because he’s allowed and grins too.

“Look at what we get drawn into.”

-

The resistance has been on for over half a year now and Maggie still has this one song stuck in her head. What’s worse is she only remembers a few bars of it. She hums those bars, over and over, trying to dislodge the rest of the song from somewhere in her brain. But it never quite works.

She shifts her burden of blankets in her arms, still humming, and heads for the infirmary tent. It’s not cold enough for patients to really need these blankets yet but it’s always a good thing to have on hand. And if Maggie uses them as an excuse to visit Anne, well…

A secretive smile breaks out across Maggie’s face. Who will be the wiser?

“Incoming.”

It’s just this thing she says, announcing her presence before she enters the infirmary. Just in case there are kids underfoot or antsy patients. Best not to startle anyone.

Except Anne’s greeting in return is lacking. And when Maggie peers over the top of her blankets, there Anne is hunched over her desk, shoulders shaking just ever so. The infirmary is empty, except for Anne.

“Doc?”

Anne starts, twisting around and hurriedly rubbing at her eyes. But it’s already too late. She’s crying. Maggie’s eyes narrow. Who does she have to shoot?

“Maggie,” Anne says, sniffling, “good. Put those. Put those…over. There.”

Maggie dumps the blankets on the intended cot. Then she crosses her arms and just looks at Anne until she cracks. But she’s looking for Anne to tell her about the frustrating patient who came in again (for the third time!) complaining about a rash that was still completely harmless. What Anne does is bite her lower lip and dissolve into sobs.

Anne pulls a box out of her desk drawer. She opens it with shaking fingers, still crying, and brings out a beat up locket on a silver chain. The necklace has seen better days but it’s obvious someone treasured it once. Maybe still does.

“It’s hers,” Anne says, “Rebecca. Rebecca Mason. Before we left the school I found it in a box, tucked away in his room. None of the boys were around so I, I picked it up. Kept it.”

She bites her lip again, looks like strong enough to break the skin. And then the real tears start.

“I thought I’d give it back to him, you know? Here Tom, here’s your dead wife’s…your dead wife’s,” and she can’t finish her sentence.

Maggie goes to her before Anne can finish sliding down her desk, tucking Anne against her body and setting her chin gently on Anne’s head. The words start tumbling out like a breaking dam.

“He’s gone. And, and I  _know_ that. He’s probably dead. I have to be there for Hal. And Ben. Matt. But they need their father. God,  _Tom_.”

Every few seconds the tears stop and then every other word brings them back. Maggie just hugs her, little squeezes, nonsense words here and there. Soothing.

After a while Anne brings a hand up to wipe at her eyes. Her breathing evens out. But when she goes to pull away from Maggie, embarrassed even if Anne has no reason to be, Maggie just hugs her tighter.

“I’m not Tom,” Maggie says, picturing the surprised look on Anne’s face even without seeing it. “But I care a lot about you. And I want you to be happy. I’ll kill anything else that makes you cry like that. So  _mourn_ him. But come to me if it hurts too much, don’t close yourself off.”

“Why?”

So much packed into one single word. Maggie has no response. She just hugs Anne tighter.

-

_Imagine that someone you love…_

It’s a gods damn ambush. Maggie could have told Weaver that. Hell, Pope _did_  tell Weaver that. But no, no, now Maggie’s pinned down behind an overturned car with her hands pressed against her side, blood seeping through her fingers.

Of course, it didn’t start being an ambush. It started being a walk down the street, looking for any likely salvage sites of interest. Not that there were likely to be any, likely to be a trap. Pope told them all, and Weaver wouldn't listen. Even Anthony’s answering cuff was half-hearted.

Pope was right. Not that Maggie is going to tell him that, if she lives through the next couple of hours. First few minutes are crucial, she knows. Examine the wound, try and stop the bleeding, get to a doctor. Get to Anne.

It’s not the first time she’s been shot. It is, however, the first time she really wants to see her doctor.

“Go for the kill damnit!” Maggie yells at Hal ranging in and out of her sight.

That would worry her, that she keeps losing sight of him, if it wasn’t for the skitter circling her position. But maybe it’s a vision thing too. She’s starting to feel sweaty, a little faint. Maggie presses her rolled up outer shirt against her wound, casting around for her gun.

Shit. Fuck. Where the hell is it?

Hal’s still not taking the shot. Maybe he thinks he might hit Maggie by accident, but, judging by the whirring behind her, in a few minutes she’ll be screaming at him to aim for her head.

Maggie doesn’t see Anne, in the end, which is weird since she’d been keeping an eye on the doc,  _her_ doc, even before the battle began. But maybe Maggie has a few more pressing concerns to worry about.

In any event, no one sees Anne edge off to the side, kneel at the side of a dead soldier and reach for his gun. Maybe least of all Anne herself.

Maybe Anne remembers Maggie’s voice.

Take aim in front of you. Squeeze the trigger.

“But it’s just not that easy,” Anne says, to no one.

Never said it was, the first time, at least.

It’s when Anne starts walking forward, gun aimed at the back of the skitter’s head, that people start to notice. Start to shout. But Anne just clenches her teeth, ignoring everyone. One, two, three steps, and she pulls the trigger, firing straight into the alien’s face as it turns to meet her.

Hal comes to a grinding halt, staring at her. Maggie’s sure her mouth is wide open as her hand slips from her side, but the pain reprimands her and she grimaces, pulling the shirt back into position.

Anne disentangles her fingers from the gun, dropping it to the side like it has a disease. She’s running to Maggie’s side just as the mechanical whirring grows louder.

Maggie has to raise her voice to be heard over the noise. “You got a  _death wish_?”

“Where are you hurt?” Anne’s full into doctor mode, zeroing in on Maggie’s hand over her side. “Fuck. Gotta get you to the infirmary.”

She swore? Maggie shakes off the surprise, returning to anger with little effort. “You could’ve died out there!”

“You were being threatened.”

And Anne won’t look at her, a flurry of movement by Maggie’s side, but the words trigger something in Maggie’s brain.

Imagine that someone you love is about to die.

Anne loops Maggie’s arm over her shoulder and pulls Maggie to her feet. She ignores the grunt of pain Maggie wheezes out, ignores the way Maggie’s leaning most of her weight on Anne’s shoulder.

Gotta get her out.

As the others fall in to cover their backs, Anne smiles a fierce little smile.

“You were being threatened.”

**Author's Note:**

> To be expanded into a series, some scenes that fit in the verse that is Anne Glass and Maggie in a relationship together - adding other pairing(s) and other shizz. The main narrative is here though.


End file.
